Kim Strassel on the Obamacare Subsidies: Dems Setup These Cliffs, to ‘Make It Hard for Republicans to Ever Say No’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
GIGOT: “Kim you wrote this week about this and the Republican thinking about this and there are some signals that even if they won’t give the Democrats what they want while the government is shut, they might, once it opens. What do you think?”

STRASSEL: “Well, and if they do that, Paul, they face a choice. I mean absolutely I agree with Kate. This should not be something they agree to prior to, but they’re giving winks and nods they be willing to make a deal down the road because some Republicans are very worried that in fact this cliff, which Democrats setup for this reason, to make it hard for Republicans to ever say no to these, that this cliff will hurt some of their constituents and hurt their re-election. If they’re going to have that discussion, Paul, they need to make a big decision. Are they going to just blank check this and continue these subsidies rolling, or are they going to use this as an opportunity to say Democrats, you want an extension on this. Then we need to make fundamental reforms to the underlying ObamaCare program. The things that are truly driving up the cost, and begin that project of reforming and potentially slowly dismantling that law. They aren’t going to do the whole thing, repeal, they need to fix pieces of it, this is an opportunity if they choose to go that way.”